1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an improved data processing system, and in particular, to a method and implementation for automating processes using data driven pre-recorded transactions.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the current art, there are several growing fields of interest regarding business transaction performance and availability. One field is business process automation (BPA), which is the process of using technology to replace a manually performed process with an automated process. With business process automation tools, customers are able to integrate, automate, and formalize their business processes while lowering costs and process times.
Another growing field is automated testing, which allows customers to compile data about business transactions occurring on their Web sites by manually recording and playing back these transactions. Some examples of existing automated testing products include Rational Robot, Rational Performance Tester, Rational XDE, and Rational Functional Tester, among others. Within an automated test area, a recording component captures performance data about actual user transactions that are executed against elements (e.g., Web servers, Web application servers) of the business environment. A playback component executes the recorded transactions to simulate actual user activity. These simulated transactions are known as synthetic transactions.
A third field is automated business process performance and availability monitoring which uses the automated test scripts created in the automated test area to monitor the business environment for performance and availability problems. One example of a performance and availability monitor is Tivoli Composite Application Manager for Response Time Tracking (RTT), which is a centrally managed suite of software components that monitor the availability and performance of Web-based services and operating system applications. RTT allows the customer to reuse the automated test script assets in production for proactive monitoring of their business applications. These assets are typically defined by a management policy and distributed to remote playback agents to determine performance and availability of the application from worldwide locations. For example, customers can reuse automated test scripts in RTT to playback business transactions for Windows GUI applications and HTTP web transactions to allow a customer to determine the manner by which transactions are processed by the various elements of the electronic business, and thus, which processes are causing problems and where the processes may be improved.